Soldiers are easily tricked into leaving their site defenseless
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
widelands |
Won't Fix
|
Medium
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
AI now played this trick against me (no idea if intentionally):
- attack a military building deep in territory (it was seen across a river basically on the other side of map);
- soldiers from my border barriers happily charge after attackers, leaving only 1 soldier in the barrier;
- attack and destroy the now defenseless barrier.
My soldiers returned just as the second attack reached the border barrier, but apparently they couldn't help much when "outside".
Game that itself claims that its warfare is mostly economy-based shouldn't allow such tactics (not to mention that it is bull, relying on dumb soldier behavior).
I can suggest a few improvements. I guess just one wouldn't be enough.
* Make soldiers never leave their building _too far_. If they fail to catch up with attackers within distance X of their base, they abandon the chase and return.
* Soldiers on "support" mission (as long as they are not fighting yet) should immediately return if their own building is attacked.
* Make attacker engage defenders if those approach too close. It seems now defenders have to "bump" into attackers for those to stop and fight.
* Don't let attackers enter and destroy a building as long as there are idle defenders just waiting for their turn to fight nearby. It seems that now attackers can sometimes destroy a building even if they are outnumbered, but are lucky enough to wipe its "inner" defense.
description: | updated |
Changed in widelands: | |
status: | Expired → Confirmed |
importance: | Undecided → Medium |
Yes, I've seen this as well.
I think one of the main problem is that when soldiers leave a building to defend, only a single one remains behind. Thus, if that building is visited by multiple attackers it is likely to fall.
I like your first three proposals and think they could help improve the situation, though I am not sure about the fourth one though. The latter is mainly because I wonder how easy it would be to tell the difference between returning defenders and an endless stream of new reinforcements this way.
Another thing which could work is to reduce the amount of defenders so that there's a certain amount guarding the building. From what I can remember I certain other game had a military setting to adjust the number of defenders from few to many, and I guess that might be something to consider.
PS. To the person who clicked the "also affects me" link, could you please change the status of the bug report to "confirmed" too, next time?